Sunday, 14 August 2011

Doc Mortis by Barry Hutchison: Review, Guest Post + UK Giveaway!

Kyle wakes up in hospital – which is strange, because he doesn't remember being ill. And that's not all. He's also deliriously flitting in and out of the Darkest Corners, and in the shadow version of the hospital the surfaces aren't clean, and the sharp instruments aren't used for healing. It's Kyle's most terrifying experience yet, and it's about to get much, much worse. The doctor will see him now…

Review:

Doc Mortis is the second Invisible Fiends book I've read, and what a creepy one it was! I was expecting a certain level of horror but, quite frankly, I wasn't expecting Doctor Mortis - I bet he'd give every reader of any age a case of the goosebumps. Believe me, the word 'terror' was invented with him in mind!

Doc Mortis continued straight on from book three, The Crowmaster, with Kyle soon finding himself in a hospital in the Darkest Corners. It's there that he met I.C., a trapped (and very lovely) little boy, as well as the evil Doc Mortis and even a familiar old friend. The choices Kyle had to make were difficult and horrifying, and I was on tenterhooks for much of the book's second half. I shivered with every screech and scrape that signalled the Doc's arrival, and I was so glad I wasn't in Kyle's shoes!

Even though Doctor Mortis was like one of the creepiest horror movie monster you could think of, he didn't come across as threatening as he could have been. I think the Crowmaster had more of a presence, but I didn't find him that scary. I'm sure I've got things the wrong way round, but I'd be interested to see what other readers make of this one.

I enjoy this series more with each book I read, and I'm already looking forward to book five, The Beast. Barry Hutchison has a very twisted mind when it comes to his Invisible Fiends, and you'll find out just how twisted if you read Doc Mortis. Well done to him for being gruesome - we need more children's horror writers to follow in his footsteps!

~

Barry Hutchison

What’s next for the Invisible Fiends?

From the moment I started the INVISIBLE FIENDS series, I knew what the end was going to be. If you go and read the prologue of any of the books you’ll get some idea what the final book is going to be about. It’s the end of the world, and it’s all Kyle’s fault!

In DOC MORTIS I’ve started pulling some of the story strands together so I can start moving everything towards that prologue, which is actually a scene from about half way through the sixth book.

A lot more starts to come together in book five, and some big revelations are made about some of the main characters in the story. Some of them you may be expecting. Others… probably not so much.

Over the past three books, things have steadily been becoming scarier. DOC MORTIS, in my opinion, is the scariest book of the series so far, delving deeper into the murky depths of horror than any of the previous books have.

Book five – THE BEAST – on the other hand, is a bit more like the first book in tone. It’s scary, of course, but it’s an exciting scary, rather than a disturbing one. There are no dead(ish) mutant babies here. Instead there’s fast-paced action and thrilling adventure to go along with the scares and the monsters and the ever-increasing body count.

Much of the story is set back in Kyle’s village, so we’re almost going full circle as the larger plot of the series starts to draw to a close. A lot of the locations will be familiar to those who read the first book. We get to see inside The Keller House, for example, and Kyle returns to the church and the police station where he and Ameena first hid from Mr Mumbles.

A few characters from earlier books return, too, but I won’t spoil things by saying who or why. Let’s just say the claustrophobia of DOC MORTIS has been replaced by wide-open spaces and more enemies than Kyle has ever had to face before.

Big things will happen in the fifth book when it is published in January 2012. Major characters die. Others wish that they could. And the story ends with a truly shocking moment that will have you counting down the days until the sixth – and final - book is published in August.

And as if all that isn’t exciting enough, I have another book being published in March next year, which is completely unlike the INVISIBLE FIENDS series. It’s called THE 13TH HORSEMAN, but that’s a story for another time…

~

Thanks to HarperCollins, I have one (1) set of Invisible Fiends books to give away, which includes: Mr Mumbles, Raggy Maggie, The Crowmaster and Doc Mortis.